Flashback: Rochester Museum and Science Center

As promised I plan this month on doing more detailed flash backs to last month’s adventures (since I didn’t post them).

For Luke’s birthday we decided to explore the Rochester Museum and Science Center. The museum had a traveling display of a few of Da Vinci’s writings and inventions we were interested in; as well as we wanted to check out the closest science museum.

Luke and I have enjoyed several science museums in the past few years. They tend to be an interactive easy date-day activity. While we were dating we explored the California Science Center and enjoyed their exhibit on ecosystems.

On a vacation in Portland Oregon in 2013 we visited OMSI the Oregon Museum of Science and Innovation. There we enjoyed many interactive displays, shows, and had the chance to tour a WWII sub. For more on this see the link below:

We began our day at the Rochester Museum and Science Center in the Da Vinci display. In one gallery were working wooden replicas of Da Vinci’s mechanical inventions along with pictures of his original drawings. Each invention had an explanation of it’s purpose, use, and how we use it in modern day machinery.

Around the corner in the same gallery were pictures of the Mona Lisa. A photographer was allowed to take raw images of the Mona Lisa and the results were displayed. The science of photography was able to help researchers discover what the Mona Lisa probably looked like when it was originally painted and how it has been damage or aged over time. This was more interesting for the science behind photography then anything else, which Luke enjoyed.

Around the corner was the larger Da Vinci gallery. Here were more wooden replicas of some of his larger work in all fields: aviation, weather detection, musical instruments, sea exploration, civil engineering, biology, and more.

I was unaware that he was the first to create the weather vane, tank, and some of our first drawings of human anatomy, later used in Gray’s Anatomy (the book).

This was the highlight of our time at the RMSC. RMSC had an inactive outdated display of local colonial history as well as one of cultural symbols from around the world that seemed untouched for at least 20 years. To get to the hands-on learning area you had to take an elevator from the 70’s to a half floor that Luke and I were unsure we wanted to ride in.

They did have a decent hands-on area for teaching about Rochester’s role in the underground railroad and natural history area including everything from dinosaurs to local farming and the environment.

It is clear that for children the best museum to go to is the Museum of Play for more on this click on the link below: